Since I appear to be the first poster, I am going to partially give you input on a couple of the issues you ask about.

Well, I was when I started typing

First, "small town it the mountains is a red flag". How far is it to the nearest service center for MAC? Does your IT guy not work on MAC? That would not be surprising, since the market for MAC is so small.

Know this, MAC (Apple) has never exceeded 10% of the personal computer market in the United States, perhaps worldwide. The common retort is that MACs don't need service so why worry.

That may have been true when MAC parts were proprietary. However in the last decade MAC's are pretty much built with the same parts off the same shelves as other PC's, Windows or other.

Ball park, tough to answer because it is so much based on configuration as you are finding out. I would set the MAC/PC question aside until you know what you need in the computer. That's a much better approach. Since the parts are pretty much the same, it will be to your advantage to determine configuration for the hardware. The common answer to that is the fastest CPU you can afford (hopefully Intel i7 or comparable), the biggest hard drive you can afford and as much RAM as the computer will hold up to the amount your can afford... (that didn't help did it)

Then you can get back to the "ball park" price per operating system. My answer on that would be that the MAC will cost you 40% more than a similarly performing Windows or other OS PC.

example.... first pick the performance. Then if a $750 PC gives you the performance, you would likely spend a bit over a $1000 to get that performance in a MAC.

MACs and Viruses... Myth for the most part. Even Apple says be sure to run security protection on your MAC.

The only reason you don't often hear about MAC's getting virus', is because of the small percentage of actual incidents and the 10% max market share for 30 years. No Growth other than the growth of the overall market.

Then there is also result related to the small market. Hackers perceive MACs as the underdog vs. Microsoft and would prefer to BOTH attack Microsoft as the dominant player AND a larger target creating more distress in the market.

Put simply, MAC is just not big enough to bother with in most hackers minds. Plus for MAC but no guarantee you won't get hit if you try to defy the odds and not sercure your computer with security software.

Then there is the current flux in the Operating System. You can only buy Windows 8/8.1 on the PC side, and that operating system has been a top shelf loser. Absolutely bogus, although some have managed to make it work. There is a free, five minute fix for it's biggest problem, but generally people would rather whine and complain and do anything to avoid Microsoft if they can. What does that fix. I ran Windows 8.1 with the fix for two years and it was rock solid and fast.

For the last 3 months I have been running the upcoming Windows 10 on the Windows Insider Program. That involves people who get to run the OS to test and provide input for enhancement. I'm on the third preview build and every one has been flawless, both in terms of running all my equipment, AND all my programs.

I should add here that I have been a PC consultant and Tech for 25 years, and did on-site repair for DELL for five year during that period.

Summarizing.... access to service. MAC's need service on a par with PC's, because internally they are the same on important parts.

MAC may seemingly have a current lead on the operating system. At this point, with what I am experiencing on Windows 10, I think MAC users are in for a real surprise.

Last, the Minority position of MAC in the productivity market, while their creativity is bleeding off to toy watches, and other devices. Oops, did I actually say that out loud??

Lets see what others have to say. Clearly I have voiced an opinion. What does your IT person say. I'm surprised your post does not say that your IT person told you to "Just get a MAC!"

Since I appear to be the first poster, I am going to partially give you input on a couple of the issues you ask about.

Well, I was when I started typing

First, "small town it the mountains is a red flag". How far is it to the nearest service center for MAC? Does your IT guy not work on MAC? That would not be surprising, since the market for MAC is so small.

Know this, MAC (Apple) has never exceeded 10% of the personal computer market in the United States, perhaps worldwide. The common retort is that MACs don't need service so why worry.

That may have been true when MAC parts were proprietary. However in the last decade MAC's are pretty much built with the same parts off the same shelves as other PC's, Windows or other.

Ball park, tough to answer because it is so much based on configuration as you are finding out. I would set the MAC/PC question aside until you know what you need in the computer. That's a much better approach. Since the parts are pretty much the same, it will be to your advantage to determine configuration for the hardware. The common answer to that is the fastest CPU you can afford (hopefully Intel i7 or comparable), the biggest hard drive you can afford and as much RAM as the computer will hold up to the amount your can afford... (that didn't help did it)

Then you can get back to the "ball park" price per operating system. My answer on that would be that the MAC will cost you 40% more than a similarly performing Windows or other OS PC.

example.... first pick the performance. Then if a $750 PC gives you the performance, you would likely spend a bit over a $1000 to get that performance in a MAC.

MACs and Viruses... Myth for the most part. Even Apple says be sure to run security protection on your MAC.

The only reason you don't often hear about MAC's getting virus', is because of the small percentage of actual incidents and the 10% max market share for 30 years. No Growth other than the growth of the overall market.

Then there is also result related to the small market. Hackers perceive MACs as the underdog vs. Microsoft and would prefer to BOTH attack Microsoft as the dominant player AND a larger target creating more distress in the market.

Put simply, MAC is just not big enough to bother with in most hackers minds. Plus for MAC but no guarantee you won't get hit if you try to defy the odds and not sercure your computer with security software.

Then there is the current flux in the Operating System. You can only buy Windows 8/8.1 on the PC side, and that operating system has been a top shelf loser. Absolutely bogus, although some have managed to make it work. There is a free, five minute fix for it's biggest problem, but generally people would rather whine and complain and do anything to avoid Microsoft if they can. What does that fix. I ran Windows 8.1 with the fix for two years and it was rock solid and fast.

For the last 3 months I have been running the upcoming Windows 10 on the Windows Insider Program. That involves people who get to run the OS to test and provide input for enhancement. I'm on the third preview build and every one has been flawless, both in terms of running all my equipment, AND all my programs.

I should add here that I have been a PC consultant and Tech for 25 years, and did on-site repair for DELL for five year during that period.

Summarizing.... access to service. MAC's need service on a par with PC's, because internally they are the same on important parts.

MAC may seemingly have a current lead on the operating system. At this point, with what I am experiencing on Windows 10, I think MAC users are in for a real surprise.

Last, the Minority position of MAC in the productivity market, while their creativity is bleeding off to toy watches, and other devices. Oops, did I actually say that out loud??

Lets see what others have to say. Clearly I have voiced an opinion. What does your IT person say. I'm surprised your post does not say that your IT person told you to "Just get a MAC!"

I'll take a stab at your weekly BSOD issue. The way to isolate this problem is to view the system, application and hardware logs in Windows. Contained within the event logs is likely to be a number of conflicts that are preceded by a red flag. That's where you will find the conflict, problem or issue causing your BSOD.

Do a web search for "accessing windows system logs" and follow the directions for accessing the logs. That gets you to step 1. Once you find all instances of critical (red flagged) system, hardware or application errors you'll have to get some help figuring out how to resolve the problems.

The kinds of errors that typically don't show up in the logs are RAM memory address failures. If your logs are relatively clean you can run a memory test using a utility called MemTest:

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

BSOD issue are often related to device conflicts. It is a good idea to make sure that all of your system devices have up to date drivers. You can update drivers by right clicking on the "My Computer" icon and then select the "manage option" navigate your way to the "device manager". Scroll through all of the installed devices and for each one choose the "update driver option" via the web. Your computer will query the MS driver database to ensure that you have the latest signed drivers installed.

If all of this seems to daunting find a local computer technician to help you isolate the conflict that is causing the BSOD.

Hi - I am a semi- computer geek by necessity. I ran my business for years on PC's until the maintenance costs and computer failures finally drove me to switch the entire office to Macs. I can only tell you that a Mac is the way to go. I have owned many PC's and many Mac's and the difference in cost to buy the Mac's is more than made up for by the fact that they work - all the time. I have had about 20 Macs in my business and have exactly one hard drive fail in ten years. I still have 2007 iMacs working perfectly in my office. I have never put on virus protection software. If you check out the Mac 27 inch you will be sold. The screen is gorgeous and it works wonderfully with light room.